


Pieces of Work among the Rubble

by wishfulclicking



Category: Dredd (2012)
Genre: Backstory, Dubious Consent, Gen, Graphic Violence, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-17
Updated: 2014-10-17
Packaged: 2018-02-21 11:37:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2466827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishfulclicking/pseuds/wishfulclicking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madeline lives a lifetime in the fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pieces of Work among the Rubble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cherith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherith/gifts).



> Much thanks to S for the beta. This work is based off of the film, Dredd. All quotes are from the movie. Violence is canon level; prostitution and underage subtext is implied/referenced only.

_“Quit working when she got sliced up by a pimp; she got her own back. [...] Took over his business interests and never looked back.”_

The Slo-Mo hits and the way down is an eternity, or at least a lifetime.

“I shouldn’t let you live; but I got something worse for a too smart whore like you.’ Nico gives her one of his charming smiles with just enough of an edge to almost make her afraid if fear was something she could touch. He tightens his grip around her neck tight enough to make her wheeze out a breath; then he presses his knee between her thighs like he’s going to fuck her while he chokes the life out of her. “Eh, Madeline, my belle? Here’s a lesson for you,” he says, and then he carves an awakening in her face. 

She can’t scream; wouldn’t even if Nico wasn’t clutching at her neck like he wasn’t still weighing whether or not to strangle her instead of stopping at cutting her up. Blood runs down her face, and when she looks down she can see a dislodged flap of skin. The wall is the only thing holding her up after Nico releases her with a brush of his lips against her forehead. 

Dull throbbing pulls her out of unconsciousness. Her face feels mostly numb but her throat still feels Nico’s grip. 

“You’re awake,” Julie says from across the room. “That’s good. Doc already left after patching you up, said you’d be out for a few hours.” She pauses, and Madeline remembers her years ago with the light streaming behind her as she talked about the possibility of a better life; she vows to herself to give Julie a truth to make up for the lies she spewed years ago. Julie moves as if to offer aid but Madeline shoves her off. “Fine, be that way. Nico wants you in the basement to receive the discount crowd.” She huffs, then tosses her bleached, brittle hair with a practiced flick of her neck. “I tried to be nice and let you rest, but you’re so ungrateful. Be down in fifteen minutes.”

Rank with the smell of human scum of the workers with enough credits at the end of the day and the hookers waiting to service them in stalls, and poorly lit to hide the scars, wrinkles, and rotten teeth of both parties, the basement runs a constant hum of background of muffled grunts and gasps to push Madeline through her shift. Time seems to disappear until it becomes nothing. She stops counting after she runs out of fingers because the number of people she sees tonight is unimportant. One asks about her scar, but she only has to look at him to cease any further questions. When her shift ends, she goes to clean up with the rest of the workers; walks back up the stairs, ignores Julie on her way up, and finds she can still get in her old room, which is a surprise until she sees Nico stretched out in wait for her.

“You liking your lesson?” He doesn’t even bother looking at her. “That’s where you’ll have to be from now on with your face being the way it is. Shame couldn’t let the doctor use the expensive stuff to make you good as new, but you are getting up there.” He stands up and motions for her to come to him. “Besides, this give you a little bit of character. I think you should thank me.” He looks down to the floor and grins. “Why don’t you get down there and show me what you’ve learned.”

Her face throbs, never stopped from when she woke up and all through her shift, but there’s a thrill running down her spine as she kneels and gives Nico the thanks he deserves. 

He screams until he can’t any longer. She always knew he was weak.

She comes out with blood dripping down her chin, the bitter, salty taste of him lingering on her tongue, and his guttural scream ringing in her ears in a victorious feast for the senses. Blood, her own and his, cloud her right eye and her fresh scar (a gift she thinks, because in the pain she has found a renewed purpose) burns; but all of this--the pain, the blood, the scars--will all fade away. What’s important is what she does next.

_“We have her on record from her hooker days [...] Madeline Madrigal, ex-hooker from the S-9 Pleasure District.”_

The isolation cell is barely big enough for her to stand and stretch her arms. Fifteen days in solitary for solicitation; not the light sentence she’s known the homeless clustered in corners get, but still she wonders how exactly she was caught this time. There’s a rhythm to the raids; with only so many Judges to go around, solicitation pickups are an easier job to round out numbers and show progress towards justice, or whatever nonsense the comm spews on the news. Madeline knows a raid happened three months ago, so they weren’t due; it’s one reason she agreed with Julie’s suggestion to work the section of nine that was more on the outer regions from where she usually worked. Working the apartments was what she knew; she had been doing it for years, from the expansive loft to the old, rich fuck paying for her blood on the sheets to the now smaller, corner apartment that still pulled in big credits but not as much as her first time had. But recently the girls and guys working the outer regions were bringing in more credits than it would seem small time drug runners should have to waste at the end of the day. If they were dropping that much on minutes in a dark corner, then what were they pulling in?

Her twelfth night in Madeline wonders if she even has a place to return to. She’s seen how this goes: pros get picked up, and Nico springs for them in the first night with well placed bribe and inflated bond payment paid through the proper channels. Madeline has seen patrolling Judges step in on their breaks, and not to come make arrests. 

“Madrigal, your pickup is here,” a low level guard announces before the door slides open, assaulting her with neon light and a wave of freshly filtered air. She gets up with minimal difficulty, collects her possessions, minus her credits because this is how these things go, and she’s already imagining have to put in more shifts to make up for the loss. 

“Hey, Mads,” a voice calls out to her from an alley after she’s walked a block. Caleb, one of the minor workers in the apartment Madeline sees around sometimes, steps out from the shadows. “I was coming out from the shift and figured you could use the ride.”

“Nico didn’t send you?” she asks when she gets in the car.

“Not really.” He shrugs. “ Everyone knew the sentence; Julie was quick to report on the pickup. The others--”

“Are already out?” she asks, cutting him off.

“Well, yeah.” He stops, glances over at her. “Most five or six days ago,” then stops himself because he knows hookers aren’t meant for discussions beyond the day’s count and shift times.

Madeline does him a favor of not pressing because he’s given her enough for now to confirm her suspicions. “Did you pull in a good haul from your shift?”

He smiles, relieved. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks, by the way, you were right about pushing out those fucks from Big Mike’s squad from the corner; business really picked up. I don’t think Nico was too happy though; or he was happy with the money, but he was worried about being pulled into a turf battle. Said I was too stupid to think of the long term.”

“You pulled in double though, right?” She doesn’t need to wait on his nod because she’s had twelve nights to think on a lot of things like the money in drugs versus hooking, and who got pulled into the raids and placed in cells and who sent the bail money, and how often these raids occurred. She had also thought about old hookers and how she doesn’t see that many; how everyone ended dead, either carved out from sickness, beat to death after a robbery, or whatever other myriad of ways to this wretched world found its end for you. She is not too stupid to think long term.

_“Not long ago…”_

“Maddy, my angel,’ her mother sings to her at night before they go to bed. Madeline wants her own room, would like to have some nights where she isn’t pressed against her mother. She dreams of a bigger place, something like Miss Julie has on the upper level with her own view and small garden. It’s a secret that she’s been in Miss Julie’s place, seen how her closet full of bright clothes was bigger than the apartment Madeline and her mother shared. There aren’t many secrets between her and her mother now that dad is dead; now there’s just things they talk around like mom’s slowing walk and recurring fevers; or Madeline not being good enough to become a Judge.

Being a Judge didn’t even seem like that good of a thing. Where were the judges when her dad was being mugged and murdered? No one was arrested; the assistant in the medical center had to come and tell them the unidentified body had been her father. Madeline had only taken the test because everyone had to take them, and if she had passed she would have had a place in the academy and her mom wouldn’t have had to work so hard to support the both of them. If there weren’t enough Judges to protect people like her father who just went to their jobs, then how could they possibly reject her? 

Madeline has another secret. When she was in Miss Julie’s apartment, Miss Julie had taken her out to a large window and let her look at the view; then she spread her arms, did a twirl with her sunshine blonde hair and robes made of fabric that Madeline had never seen before, and told her if she ever wanted to know how she made her money, then just ask. Madeline wants to know how Miss Julie has so much when she hardly seems to leave her apartment and just has a lot of visitors. Tomorrow, she is going to ask. 

Two hundred floors is a long way down, also a high way up.


End file.
